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The first movement of the Sixth and the new Finale for the Fourth are akin in style in certain ways and even share some musical ideas—and both of them reflect his new interest in comprehensibility. It is telling that these movements contain only traces of the dense stretto-like passages of imitation that Bruckner had created few years previously, somewhat awkwardly in the earlier version of the Fourth and very effectively in the Fifth. Instead they use contrapuntal methods in a new, different way; in effect, Bruckner now has isolated and extracted elements from the classic devices of counterpoint to apply them in ways suited to the demands of effective, comprehensible symphonic composition.

A comparison of the coda of the first version of the Finale of the Fourth Symphony and the new version completed in 1880 will illustrate Bruckner’s new manner. Although some of the leading thematic material remains the same, the character of the music is absolutely different. In the first version, the final wave of the coda begins with overlapping imitation of the symphony’s opening horn-call in shorter note values. Soon the opening horn-call returns in its original form, while the main theme of the finale appears in close imitation.

In his manuscript score, which clearly shows Bruckner’s additions, he even added a comment to explain the organization of some of the imitative, identifying the organization of the stretto (or in German, Engführung):

This level of contrapuntal intensity continues to rise almost until the very end of the symphony, when the trumpets at last ring out their final call:

This passage presents a sort of controlled chaos, with its thickets of imitation in the brass sections, which saturate the air with their chiming echoes, producing a wonderfully dense soundscape—and certainly magnificent in its own way. It is not, however, comprehensible so much as dazzling.

In the new version, which Bruckner composed in 1879, we hear nothing like this—no canon, no stretto, no diminution—but rather clear and structurally essential use of simultaneous inversion: with the original and the inversionappearing simultaneously.

(In striking contrast to the layer of imitation in the first version, which remains on the surface of the music, here the imitation forms the basic harmonic structure of the music and it appears several times as a basic organizing element in the music.) This music is quite austere in its texture—perhaps as a reaction against the exuberant excess of the early version—and this creates a uniquely calm intensity.

While this music is distinctly unlike the early version, it is similar in some important ways to the coda of the first movement of the Sixth. The mood of these two codas certainly differs—the one is rather dark and mysterious as it moves tautly to its final arrival in the home key of E-flat major, while the other is radiant in its major key, its calmly majestic strides, and its brilliant use of timpani and trumpet. Yet they both make great use of what could be called Bruckner’s “new contrapuntal manner.” In the Sixth this is not done as austerely as in the new Fourth, but it has nothing like the extravagance of the earlier version of the Fourth. Again, Bruckner emphasizes simultaneous inversion, now with clearly disposed imitation, with the statements successive not overlapping, creating almost a feeling of echo or dialogue across the registers of the brass and wind sections.

It opens with simultaneous inversion of a version of the opening theme, in horn and oboe. As horn and oboe continue this process, growing gradually less strict, a trumpet enters, echoing the horn, together with a very free inversion in the bassoon. Then something remarkable happens: the horns begins a series of entrances that are so relaxed that they feel more like a dialogue or echo pattern than actual counterpoint.

Finally to return to Tovey. In his essay on the Sixth, he commented on Bruckner’s use of counterpoint in this movement:

"The enemy blasphemes when the devout Brucknerite exclaims at the wonderful contrapuntal mastery of these devices. Technically they are remarkable only for their naïveté; the genius of them lies in the fact that they sound thoroughly romantic."

With his reference to Bruckner’s “wonderful contrapuntal mastery” Tovey here hints at exactly those aspects of his style that, as I have argued, crystallized in this symphony. Yet his suggestion of technical naiveté is surely out of place; while this music is certainly clear and comprehensible, this is not because of a lack of wisdom or experience. To the contrary, it was only by working through the intricacies he visited on the Fourth in 1875 and, far more successfully, the fugal wonders he created in the Fifth, that Bruckner was able to isolate devices derived from strict counterpoint and use them with new flexibility to enrich the musical fabric and serve the individual character of each symphony. It is not naiveté at all, then, but rather hard-won technical maturity that allowed Bruckner to achieve one of the rarest forms of creative sophistication—artful and effective simplicity. And it is this that lies behind the Homeric grandeur of this music, with its majestic sureness and the splendor of its sound.

The music examples are reproduced with the kind permission of the Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag, Vienna

The images from Bruckner’s manuscripts are reproduced with the kind permission of the Music Collection of the Austrian National Library

The audio examples are used with the kind permission of Gerd Schaller and the Philharmonie Festiva on the Profil label